I use to have a friend who I loved, as friends love each other, but I dropped the friendship because he became too difficult to love. Carrying his burdens became more than I could bear.

We have all had this experience, whether with a friend, a spouse, a parent, a child, or a sibling. It became too much of a burden to love them, so we dropped them. While we did so with regret, we did so convinced that we had to.

Love brings burdens.

We all sin and fall short of God’s glory. None of us are perfect.

When my wife said, “I do” at our wedding nearly 32 years ago, she knew I was incomplete and imperfect. Together we agreed to share each other’s burdens in the exchange of these vows:

I will you love you, comfort you, cherish, honor and keep you in plenty and in want, in joy and in sorrow, in sickness and health, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in whatever our life may bring, as long as we both shall live.

Yes, love brings burdens. Yet, love also finds ways to carry those burdens either through a season of difficulty or until the burden has been relieved.

This is where most love fails. There is a weight limit to the load we are willing to carry. When we reach the limits of the weight we can or are willing to carry, we cry out, “Loving you is killing me!”

I have wept with others who stand at this crossroads. I understand the heaviness of the load and the pain and suffering it brings.

Love is a heavy load.

Love is a rose set in a bed of thorns, in this setting love is a many-splendored thing. (2)

Jesus said it best,

“There is no greater love, than to lay down your life for your friends!”(3)